The purpose of the Gordon Conferences is to present and discuss informally current research results of common interest to those attending the conference, with emphasis on new results in rapidly developing areas. It is generally agreed that this is a very effective method of speeding the work in a new field: especially of focussing on the important problems. The Biopolymers Conference has become a meeting place for scientists working on the structural and physical chemistry of large biological molecules and complex assemblies. For example, in this coming year we will focus on chromatin, on rhodopsin and membranes containing visual pigments, on DNA molecules from entire chromosomes, on mechanisms of DNA condensation, on the structures of protein assemblies and on the mechanism of protein folding.